How To Remove Carpet & Prep For Hardwood Floors

Dude, removing wall to wall carpeting (and all the layers under it) is no joke. We learned that when we finally tackled that task this weekend – and lived to tell the tale. Let me just tell you, progress smells a lot better than old carpeting. Even when there’s a substantial amount of sweat involved…

When we bought this house we knew that the four bedrooms upstairs (along with the hallway) needed new flooring since the once-cream (now mostly tan) wall to wall carpets were stained, threadbare, and even holey in some areas.

Thankfully a few areas were so loose we could peek under them during our very first walk-through to see what we were working with. Sadly, there was no hardwood to be found under there, and we were greeted with subfloor. But we’re so glad we made that discovery before buying (we definitely factored that expense into our decision). And after we got over the sadness of not having old hardwoods under there to revive, we got excited about picking out new flooring.

We considered a whole range of things for a while (hardwoods, new wall to wall carpeting, bamboo, tile) and after a lot of thought ended right back at oak hardwoods, since it’s what we had in our first house as well as our current one (even in the bedrooms). We like that we can always toss down an area rug to cozy things up (and since those can change over time it feels a little more flexible than committing to a certain type/color of wall to wall carpet for a decade or two). Plus with a kid and a dog we have just found wood flooring to be easy to keep clean/wipe down/etc.

We also already have oak flooring on the stairs that lead to the second level as well as in the future office, dining room, and living room – so we thought finding some in the same finish and grain would be a nice seamless this-has-always-been-here choice. But before we could bring in some delicious new hardwoods to install ourselves (at least that’s the plan!) we were faced with stripping away all of the aforementioned nasty carpeting in all four bedrooms up there and the hallway… which turned out to be quite the job. Here’s how we got ‘er done.

First we used a mini crowbar to pry back the corner…

With some gentle force it popped right up and we could start to pull it out from that corner.

It definitely wasn’t delicate pulling, more like forceful yanking, but with John working on one corner and me in another we were able to free up enough of it to start rolling it towards the other side of the room (we paused to take this photo, but picture me standing next to John rolling along with him). It’s definitely one of those four-hands-are-better-than-two tasks if possible.

Oh and wear gloves! And long sleeves if you’re smart. We wised up after our forearms got raw from carrying rolls of carpeting down to the garage, where we’re storing it all until we can figure out what to do with it (it’s too gross to donate, so we might need to rent a Bagster or something to get rid of it). Update: thanks for all the info on recycling carpets, cutting them down for curbside pickup, and all the other cheaper/greener alternatives than just trashing them. You guys are geniuses!

Room by room we repeated that process (and down the hallway as well). Pry up the corner, yank yank yank, roll roll roll, and drag that baby down to the garage. In some areas there was so much carpeting that we cut it in half with a box cutter before carrying it down to lighten our load. Then we were left with this lovely blue carpet padding underneath. Which was stapled and nailed down in about a thousand places per room (sadly that’s not an exaggeration).

Just like the carpeting, it could be yanked up, but it left a ton of little staples and nails and tack strips all around the room once it was stripped from the space. These are tack strips. They run around the perimeter of a room and are thin little shim-like pieces of wood with nails poking up through them (they grab the carpet pad and carpet to hold it in place).

Sometimes you can shove a crowbar under them (this takes borderline brute strength, so your palm is red even with gloves on afterwards) and pop them up all as one piece. The hard thing is that if they’re old and brittle (check) sometimes they splinter as they go, which means instead of slamming a prybar against them to try to get each 2′ long strip up in about 30 seconds, if it splinters a ton it can take five minutes to dig out all of the nails and splintered wood that break apart but are still stuck in the floor. You can see me gracefully (and breathlessly) doing this in the video we made for you about five photos down.

I worked on all of the tack strips in the master bedroom while John did the hallway and the nursery and then I tackled the guest room while John worked on Clara’s room. It probably took us about an hour and a half to get that part done, so one person trying to do that all by themselves might be in it for 3+ hours (probably with some blisters even with gloves on).

Once the tack strips were all up we were faced with the harder part…

… these guys.

They were everywhere and the prybar was of no help since it couldn’t really get under them. At first the only way we could get them up was by hand with a needle nosed pliers. One by one. But after John did Clara’s closet that way and it took over an hour (for one closet!!!) we decided we needed to find an alternative. Thankfully a little googling turned up the idea of a nice heavy duty long-handled floor scraper (we got ours for $25 at Lowe’s) and that was a lot faster! It still took some serious strength, and we both had sore backs, but we were able to get all of the staples up in all four bedrooms and the hallway in about two hours (at the by-hand-with-a-pliers-rate we thought it might take us about two days). Warning: if you have hardwoods, you might not want to use a scraper since it could ding them up, but it’s great for subflooring.

The next day we returned to clean up, using a broom to make piles followed by the shop-vac to suck up all the staples and nails.

You can see in this video how each step of the process went (it shows how to get up those tack strips and staples a little better than still photos can):

Now we have smooth, bare subfloors that are ready for hardwood.

We never thought we’d be so glad to see pure unadulterated pressed wood in our lives!

And now our garage looks like this:

That, my friends, is what progress looks like. Turns out progress looks a lot like stinky rolled up carpeting.

But oh happy day, we’re moving in the right direction!

Any other carpet stripping going on? Are the staples your arch nemeses? Those little buggers were infuriating until we discovered The Amazing Wonder-Scraper! Seriously, my “what superhero power would you have?” answer would now be to have a paint roller on one arm and a floor scraper on another. Never know when you’ll need one…

Comments

I’m a volunteer committee member for the Charlottesville Design House, and I wanted to say thanks to the two of you for donating your book as a door prize. It’s really great that you guys have shown your support for such a good cause.

Wooo! Progress! When I helped my mum do this in a small room at her house we used a screwdriver and a hammer to get the tack strips and staples up. (Big screwdriver for the strips, smaller for the staples).

Can you do the heated mat under wood flooring? Eventually I need to replace the very sad distressed but not supposed to be distressed wood floor in my kitchen and that would make me happy. My concrete house = wood floors is COLD in the winter!
Also-that would be amazing in a bedroom!

Well, since the kitchen is faux brick linoleum we’re definitely planning to do something, but I think we’re thinking about tile. Maybe even heated tile! Woo woo! Of course that’ll be down the line so we’ll have to see where we end up :)

Oh yes…you MUST do heated floors if you choose tile! We installed a heated mat under our kitchen tile last year. It is amazzzzzzing. I was surprised at how affordable it was – and fairly easy to install. Also, we had it on almost 24-7 this past winter and didn’t notice much difference in our electric bill. (We used NuHeat brand if you were interested.)

The kitchen in our rancher had 2 layers of linoleum… both fake brick! We replaced it last fall with tile and electric radiant heat (we went with ThermoSoft, a USA-based co. with GREAT customer service and knowledgeable staff, http://www.thermosoft.com/radiant-floor-heating/). Our heating bill barely changed this winter but the warm tile floor makes a huge difference!

wow, guys! that was a huge job! it’s amazing how much better it looks already, with just the sub-floor. i can just imagine the beauty of new hardwoods. but… won’t you miss all those lovely stains of questionable origin?? so much mystery, gone! :)

When we were buying our hundred year old house, my husband spent 20 minutes checking out the house and about two hours checking out the three car barn in the back yard. Seriously- the realtor thought he died in there. She and I read all the home-owners’ magazines waiting for him to get back. It is still his favorite place to be! Garages rule! Enjoy yours!

Ah yes, the good old days of ripping up carpet. I hate staples with a passion. The worst part was the stairs…oh the stairs… When we ripped out our carpets we took the opportunity to paint all trim while there was no flooring down and even painted some walls. Love reading about these new adventures!

My partner and I were living in my in-laws rental unit, when we brought our own house and moved out they took the opertunity to reno the unit. Horse Hair underlay was found under all of the carpets, my asthma and hayfever had been crazy bad while living there, now I know why.
Floor boards were a requirement when we brought our own house because of my allergies.

Congratulations on the new house! My husband and I went through this when we bought our place, we had to rip out carpeting in every room, there was mold in the padding so we were happy we found that, blah! One thing we find that really helps is to take a box-cutter and slice the carpet down in long strips and roll each one up – we use duct tape or string and tie them each up in small bundles – so much lighter to chuck down the stairs! Wish you guys the best & can’t wait to see all the new projects! CJ

Looking good! It’s amazing to me that someone would take the time to paint all of their trim BLUE! It’s a good thing you and John renovate your home for a living. This one is going to keep you busy :) Good luck and I can’t wait to watch the progress!

I was going to say that, how the rooms look way bigger and brighter. It gives me a lot of excitement, since the carpets (red or blue, which are worse to make a room look small) on our new fixer-up will be removed in about 2 weeks. Woop!

In our last house, we pulled up carpet that was even older and nastier – and we also didn’t wear masks. Gah! Seems so obvious looking back at it. Yes, I would also definitely recommend masks for anyone looking to take on this type of project.

I agree masks are so important. I never understand why on all of those HGTV reno shows, they show people putting on protective glasses but not masks. Most times they’re shown taking sledge hammers to old drywall and breathing in all that guck.

Oh, yea, I remember that! We did that in our first house and our current house. We were lucky enough to have wood floors underneath, though. We pulled all the staples by hand, who would have guessed that there was a “floor scraper” available???? ahhhhh!!!

We used curved vice grips (not the needle nosed kind) to pull staples out of our oak floors that had been covered in louan and vinyl, before refinishing them. Grip the staple with the vice grip, then put a putty knife under it so when you roll it back on the floor to pull the staple out, it doesn’t damage the hardwood. Took forever because there were literally thousands of them, but I think the only way to go if you are going to use the existing hardwoods.

Whew! So much better!! Maybe consider still posting the old carpet on Craigslist for free, even. We are currently working on raised garden beds and through our research, a lot of people have used old carpet in between the beds under mulch to ward off weeds. (News to me!)

We’re pretty well versed in painting walls with wood flooring on the ground already (that was pretty much the story of our first and current house) but we’d love to spray all that blue and mauve trim while the flooring is up, then lay the floors, and eventually paint the walls when we’re sure what colors we want to go with :)

be careful with painting too close to doing any dusty work like new flooring. the paint may seem dry, but it really takes 1-2 weeks to dry fully and that dust knows it and will glue itself to your new paint. then you either have to sand it off or live with nicely “textured” trim.

And so it begins! Excited for you! Staple removing is the worst! I never heard of that tool, that’s awesome. We did the plyer on hands and knees about four years ago. Agony. Good to know for future if needed. Can’t wait to see the new flooring. It will be beautious! ;)

We’re working up a floor plan for you guys asap! This house is almost exactly the same square footage as our current house, but the living room and dinning room are a bit smaller/cozier and the bedrooms seem to be a little bigger.

The obvious question: Are you planning to tackle any of the paint prior to installing the new floors? Even just some trim or primer?? You two are such neat and precise painters, I know you typically don’t worry too much about drips and splatters, but you’d have even less worry painting a room with a bare subfloor!

We’re pretty well versed in painting walls with wood flooring on the ground already (that was pretty much the story of our first and current house) but we’d love to spray all that blue and mauve trim while the flooring is up, then lay the floors, and eventually paint the walls when we’re sure what colors we want to go with :)

LOL. That looks like some hardddd work. I can’t wait to see what you put down for wood. It’s gonna look sooo purdy.

At my place they used wood on the entire first floor, the stairs up to the second floor & the hallway on the second floor, but the stairs up to the 3rd floor and all bedrooms have carpeting.

It’s NEW carpeting (which btw was replaced by the bank because apparently the people who got foreclosed on were THAT gross that a bank actually did work) so I’m not maknig it high priority but I would love to one day make it all be pretty pretty hardwood.

I think it might be a regional thing, but in our area tile is typically used in kitchens and bathrooms (and sometimes sunrooms) but in bedrooms hardwood or wall to wall carpet seems to be preferred. We love the warmth that wood grain brings to a room, and that it’s not as cold or hard underfoot as tile :)

Do people actually put tile in bedrooms? I live in the Midwest, and I have NEVER seen tile anywhere but bathrooms and kitchens. Hardwoods and carpet are the only bedroom flooring I have seen. Tile sounds awful for a bedroom!

I miss having hardwoods. We currently live in Florida and hardwoods are a no no with the heat and humidity. We will be moving back up north (Providence, RI) in the fall and hardwood floors are on our must have list.

I’ve seen tile floors used throughout homes in beach-y areas before–I assume because the tile handles the beating it gets from sand, salt water, etc., better than hardwoods or carpets would. It’s not my favorite look, but I can definitely see the merit!

Yep I can vouch for tile throughout the house (even bedrooms) in a beach area – it’s definitely nice to have a cooler material under your bare feet when it’s so hot outside year round! Regional differences like that are interesting :)

We live in Singapore (think hot and humid all the time) and most of the floors are marble on concrete and it kills my Achilles. Thankfully the floors in the. Bedrooms are wood (on concrete) and I can feel how much softer they are. I hate the feel of tile underfoot.

Feeling your pain!!! I just pulled the carpet, padding, tack strip and scraped the staples in the bedroom and living room of a rental we own. Breakfast the next morning consisted of three Advil and a cup of coffee. Tack strip will eat you alive if you’re not careful, but the worst part of the entire job was finding all the dirt that had worked its way through the carpet fibers and under the padding. Gross!!! Made me want to go home and tear out every square inch of carpet in my house. I might have done it except I couldn’t feel my arms anymore! Can’t wait to see your new floors!

These pictures are giving me deja vu! Our last house (in the West End of Richmond) had that colonial williamsburg blue trim when we bought it. We even had bumps in the carpet in the master bedroom! Luckily we had wood floors underneath, but I bet someone is still pulling staples out of those steps.

Oh man, I spent a few hours with a pliers last night ripping upholstery off a chair, so I hear ya with those darn staples! Glad you found an easier solution. I just battled through and my arms are feeling it this morning! :)

We’re pretty well versed in painting walls with wood flooring on the ground already (that was pretty much the story of our first and current house) but we’d love to spray all that blue and mauve trim while the flooring is up, then lay the floors, and eventually paint the walls when we’re sure what colors we want to go with :)

When we bought our house, this was our very first DIY project together! We closed on Thursday and were having new carpet installed on Friday and HAD to be out of our rental by Friday night. So, we moved all of our stuff into our garage on Thursday and got up at 8 am Friday to pull carpet in time for Lowe’s to arrive at 10 am. We did three bedrooms and the basement in those 2 hours, but we didn’t need to remove tack strips and staples since we were getting new carpet. Still, removing the carpet is a very happy memory since it was done the first morning in our first house! : )

We had the same problem in our first house- tons and tons of staples. Only they were in the original hardwoods. So we used a staple remover to get them out, one by one. Arms were super sore by the end but no damage done to our floors!

Ditto here! I’m flashing back to about three years ago as I’m reading through this post. =) We were delighted to find old hardwoods under the nasty carpet in our apartment (and now our landlord can hike up the rent on the next tenant!). It was quite a process though, especially since it was a Petersik-style “learn as you go” project.

Oh man, this gave me PTSD flashbacks. I did this in my house 5 years ago, and yes, the staples and tack strips were terrible, but even worse was finding out that underneath my gross berber wall-to-wall carpet, the carpet pad had been glued somehow to the hardwood floor (only in 1 of the bedrooms), leaving black spots of adhesive ALL OVER MY FLOOR. A friend advised that even refinishing wouldn’t work because the adhesive would damage the sanding pads. Imagine a bedroom floor full of dried gum. I bought a decent room-size remnant for $99 and have been living with it until I can afford/dedicate the time to scrap it all off and refinish. Good luck!

We had the same thing in the hallway of our old house where I think someone had at one point put old school linoleum tiles over the hardwood floors (?!). It left raised block splotches that looked like tar. I was able to scrape off the residue in a lot of places and used goo gone where I couldn’t. When we had our floors refinished you couldn’t even tell all those spots had been there!

We had the carpet pad glued down in random areas all over the house but the same scraper that’s used to remove the staples was able to get most of the adhesive up. Then you could follow up with some goo-gone and maybe you’d get it off enough to be able to refinish?

Woohoo for new house progress! Looking better already! Question- When we renovated our contractor waited until the walls/ceiling were painted before putting in the new floors to make sure that no paint got on the new floors. Will you paint before you put the floors down?…or maybe you are a little neater/more careful than our contractors! I guess I could just wait to see what tomorrow’s post holds! :)

We’re pretty well versed in painting with wood flooring on the ground already (that was pretty much the story of our first and current house) but we’d love to spray all that blue and mauve trim while the flooring is up, then lay the floors, and eventually paint the walls when we’re sure what colors we want to go with :)

I saw that you said you did the nursery while John worked in Clara’s room. Are you guys going to go ahead and have a nursery ready for a potential second baby? Or will Clara have a nursery and a big girl room?

Sorry…not trying to be nosy! I just saw that and thought I’d ask what the plans were! :)

That room (the potential future nursery) will just be a spare room and then if we’re blessed someday with a little baby to put in there, we’ll pull it together during my pregnancy like we did with Clara :)

That makes sense! :) Like I said, I wasn’t trying to be nosy and pry. I read your post about everyone always asking about a future pregnancy, and I didn’t want to come off that way at all. :) Congratulations on the new home. I can’t wait to see all of the updates you guys make!

We’re tackling that project in a few weeks – removing all the carpet in our four upstairs bedrooms and hallway! We already removed the carpeting in our licing room/family room. I found that using the back of a hammer to pull up the staples works wonders – the hammer acts as a fulcrum and they pop right out. But for our whole upstairs, we may give in and get the tool you guys used!

Wow! You guys are tough. I would have given up and hired someone for that. It already looks better without the carpet. Can’t wait to see how hardwood looks. I love hardwood floors for the same reasons you mentioned. With new floors and painted trim it will look updated in no time. But then I guess there is still the wallpaper, the kitchen floors and several other things to keep you busy. Can’t wait to follow along on your journey.

Oh my goodness – yes, I have done the carpet stripping thing and it is a TON of work. We had carpeting in every room of the house and I think I spent nearly a week on my hands & knees with pliers pulling staples out. We were trying to salvage wood floors underneath, but in the end we ended up just replacing them.

I love watching your new house adventure unfold. I am sure this sounds strange since I am just one of many readers who only knows you virtually, but I am so so happy for you guys. I feel like I am watching someone’s dreams come through before my eyes. You definitely inspire me to work to improve my home little by little. So excited to watch what happens over the next several years with your new house!

Good idea for the floor scraper… I removed our living room carpet myself (husband was very surprised when he got home that day!) and used a makeshift movers dolly to roll around the living room pulling out the staples with pliers. Saved the knees and the back! But I never thought to try the floor scraper, we have one from a tile remover project. I also wore gloves, omg if I hadn’t… ouch. My city also gives away vouchers for the dump, one per year, of course I don’t imagine every city does but I didn’t know this at the time we removed all our flooring. It might be worth checking into! Would’ve saved us $52 if we’d known about the program at that time.